


a Friend for the End of the World.

by nervoussis



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Billy Hargrove Has Powers, Fourth of July, Ice Cream, M/M, PTSD, Post-Season/Series 03, Protective Steve Harrington, Sensory Overload, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-02
Updated: 2021-01-02
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:07:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28490622
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nervoussis/pseuds/nervoussis
Summary: “I don’t want to be with anyone else.” Steve says, and.It means now. And it means always.Billy stands to grab his book.(or) I'll Stop the World and Melt With You.
Relationships: Billy Hargrove/Steve Harrington
Comments: 17
Kudos: 76





	a Friend for the End of the World.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Glitter_Bug](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Glitter_Bug/gifts).



Billy’s, like. Halfway through _Little Women_ when Max knocks on his door, and. Okay. It’s not like he slammed his way through the house with a fire itching under his skin and believed for even a second, that.

The world could be his. Just for while. 

He settles roughly, at first, into the Alcott novel. Like a brick hitting the bottom of the sea--slowly, heavy and thick with the inertia of words that ignite something that feels.

_Pink._

Inside his belly. Billy doesn’t have the wherewithal to make sense of it so he, just. Clamps his eyebrows around the liquid sunshine in his veins and loses himself in the story. 

After Starcourt the world ends but it doesn’t sound like the poems said it would. The bang and the whimper and the conclusion that, after things catch on fire and smoke rises with the sun, silence will fall over the Earth. 

Billy remembers waiting for Hawkins to sleep.

Watching Max and Mrs. Byers and. Steve. Landslide all around them to fix what had been swept away by a misjudgment in the Earth’s ability to keep itself from cracking open.

And Billy, he feels like an exposed wire. The center of the universe molding itself around the breath before the curtain falls and the audience leaves, and.

He waits for night to fall.

It never does. The overture is played out of tune, again and again, and the world turns faster than before, sounds leak from everywhere. All at once, and.

Billy feels. Doesn’t know how to... 

It’s never as simple as _asking_ for silence. For peace. When his mind makes too much noise, or. When he can’t get the sound of Neil coughing up smoke to stop bouncing off the walls. 

The ambiance that comes with sharing space, sharing your life with someone, used to be Billy’s favorite in all the world. Back when the incandescence of his mother folding laundry could be heard through the crack in his door while pirate ships bled past the boundary of the page and took him somewhere new. 

Billy likes to think of his life as intermissions between lovers. Before Starcourt he was asleep and now everything is cloaked in the fear of dawn.

Max reading to El, or.

Susan making dinner. It all reminds him of burning cities.

—

Billy wears earmuffs. Everywhere. The ones that block out the sounds of the earth crying, but do nothing at all for the reprise burying itself in his bones. 

Steve brought them to the hospital when Billy wouldn’t stop asking about the air. Why it worries so, and. 

Max knocks on the door. 

Billy thought he made himself clear. With the nonverbal shit, like. Slamming the front door _open_ and brushing past the dinner table and slamming his door _shut._

Locking himself in. He thought it was crystal clear, that. You can’t keep shoveling dirt into his grave without stopping to pray for rain. She pounds on the door again but it’s too loud. Always too much.

“What, Max?” And his voice is softer, these days. To balance out the symphony playing all around him.

“Steve’s here.” She says.

The earmuffs don’t actually block anything out. Billy can hear the battery die in the car down the street. He can hear Max shuffling on the other side of the door _one-two-three, one-two-one,_ like a waltz. A tiny dancer. 

She has the most distinct footprints in the snow. Billy held onto that when the monster cut him open.

He pads over to the door and tugs on the handle, wincing at the sharp sting of. 

_Soundsoundsound_

Hammering against the walls in his head. Billy squints, shielding his eyes. To block the noise as if it were rain. 

“Tell him I’m not home.”

“Your car’s in the driveway, dumb dumb.”

“Well, tell him I’m busy.” Billy moves to close the door, but. Max sticks her foot in the jam. 

Folds her arms and gives him this _look,_ like. He’s supposed to have a big realization about something. About the way he’s acting. Hiding in his room all the time with the blinds pulled taught against the sun. 

_You’re acting weird._

Billy shrugs like. Spit it the fuck out. And Max rolls her eyes. He can hear the shift of muscle, he can--

“Too busy to see Steve?” She says.

And okay. 

Billy picks up on why that might be weird. He shrugs again--there’s a throbbing, like. The beat of a drum. Just outside, on the lawn, or right at the back of his skull. 

Billy can’t tell where it’s coming from and he doesn’t want to know, so.

The door falls shut once more. 

\--

Being with Steve is like getting the instruments to play a song instead of wailing out of tune for the audience to throw tomatoes.

He makes everything quiet. Just by running his fingers through Billy’s hair the world is made new. Starts over with a whimper instead of the rest.

Sometimes Billy can’t breathe. 

Or his eyes will close when they’re wide open, and he can’t see anything but snow twirling against a gray sky, or like. Veins turning black and smoky with rot. Disease and Ice. Barren fields and the end of days—

Steve says the Earth has healed itself once more. That the cracks have been mended, and the ground isn’t coming apart under their feet.

So it’s summer.

That’s what Steve says. “It’s summer, baby.” _let’s go to the lake._

Billy looks up from his book. Fifty pages left in _Little Women--_ at least an entire afternoon, once he picks up the second, and. “You want to go to the lake?”

Steve sort of. Rolls onto his side, next to Billy on the quilt Mrs. Harrington made when he was in the hospital. He looks up to the sky, the clouds and the sun. 

Steve has a daisy between his fingers. 

Billy doesn’t know where it came from, but then Steve is smiling. All soft, like. A stretch of grass just before sunset. He sticks the daisy between the pages of Billy’s book. Closes it, takes it away. He sits criss-cross-applesauce until his knees are pressed against Billy’s leg. 

Steve tugs the headphones off, so. The sun hits Billy. Burns every part of him. 

“You seem like you need water.” Steve says.

And he is the only person who makes the Earth contract. Instantly Billy is overwhelmed because it comes out of nowhere these days, the. 

Tide which swallows him whole. He tucks his hair behind his ears with shaky fingers. Keeps them there, cradling his own face until things quiet down again.

He breathes, sharp and slow, when the tears start to fall. When Steve reminds him to _be gentle with yourself, baby. That’s it._

It takes five minutes for Billy to figure it out.

He needs water, like. A flower whose roots have gone frail. Or a boy who longs for home. Billy opens his eyes to Steve watching him, counting breaths on the watch he had made special.

For Billy, and his.

Bullshit. The panic attacks and the sensory _bullshit,_ and. It’s summer. Billy feels the air get choked from his lungs when Steve takes his pulse.

“You should go to the lake,” He whispers. 

Steve looks up from the watch and then back down again. “Still have ten more breaths, come on.”

“I’m fine.”

“Ten more big ones, okay. Just to be safe.”

“Steve, I’m _fine.”_ Billy smacks the watch down. Away, so he can think. Billy scrubs at his face just the wrong side of too hard. Too abrasive, and there’s a drum beating somewhere down the hill when Steve tries to grab his wrist. 

Again, to. Play nurse Maid. Steve kisses his palm once--twice, and. Billy loves him.

“It’s summer.” Billy says. 

Steve winks. “Yeah, it’s beautiful.”

It. Is, Billy thinks. With the smell of Lilac and Honeysuckle. Afternoons that give way to skies full of fireflies and Steve’s hair turning blonde in the afternoon light, it looks. Like a work of art, like. A page from a book. 

His favorite in all the world. Billy tugs his hand away from Steve’s lips, tucks his hair behind his ears again, and. Steve looks worried.

Always worried, like. He’s waiting for Billy to snap in two. 

“I want you to go to the lake.” He says. Because he’s tired of seeing that look.

Steve blinks wide, owlish eyes at him. “I want _us_ to go, Bills, that’s why--”

Billy shakes his head. Suddenly the drum falls. Silent. Steve sits frozen, suspended in time and space while the symphonies play out of tune. 

“You aren’t my doctor.” Billy says.

“I know--”

“And you aren’t my therapist.”

He expects Steve to. Say something, or stop looking like the ground is splitting open between them, when Billy charges on.

“Or my housekeeper, or _any_ of that shit, Steve. You’re. A twenty year old boy, you should be. Out with your friends for the fourth of July not taking care of your invalid partner who can’t make it through the day without breaking down in tears.”

“I don’t want to be with anyone else.” Steve says, and.

It means now. And it means always.

Billy stands to grab his book. 

\--

He leaves his earmuffs on the blanket in the grass. 

Thinks about calling and. Begging Steve to bring them over, drop them off because his head is spiraling rock formations and earthquakes let loose in the heartland. 

After dinner it hurts.

When the fireworks start to explode. Bright light and heat burning a wound into his chest, or a breaking his bones to crumbling dust. Each explosion is like child birth and pulled teeth and gunshot wounds playing a libretto behind his right eyebrow. He tries to read but the snow falls all around him--

“Hey dipshit, we’re going to watch the--” 

Billy doesn’t try to hide the tears, and.

Max doesn’t bring them up. She presses an ice pack to his forehead and wonders if she should call Steve. Call him home.

Billy wants to say yes.

Wants to call Steve himself, but. “Go have fun, kid.” 

And the wound only grows.

\--

He has four pillows on his head when the window slides open. That’s why he doesn’t hear the scattered footfall until there’s a weight on his bed, and a pair of hands rubbing his back.

One hot, one cold. 

He frowns. “Hands are cold as dick.”

Steve chuckles, fingers digging into the muscle of Billy’s neck in a way that has him soft. Huffing against the sheets. “Sorry, I brought Ice cream.”

Billy peeks out from under his fortress to Steve peppering kisses along the base of his skull.

“What time is it?” He grumbles. 

“8:30. Go to sleep.” Steve muffles against Billy’s hair, and.

“How come you’re here?” 

Steve holds out the earmuffs, cherub face scruffy and apologetic and so, so beautiful. “Sorry it took so long, I wanted to give you space, you seemed like. You needed space.” 

He pulls the blanket up around Billy’s shoulders, even as he worms around to sit up. Get a better look, and. Apologize. 

“Look, Stevie--”

“You shouldn’t be sitting with a migraine like that,” He says firmly. “Doc says three glasses of water, two Tylenol, and--”

“Rest, yeah, I.” Billy feels like smiling. For the first time in days, he. Wants to smile. “Thank you.”

Steve nods. Like he’s disappointed. Eyebrows wrinkling as he fiddles with the cracked leather headband. 

Billy looks at the pint of cherry crunch leaking a puddle onto the mattress. “So you brought ice cream, huh?”

Steve shrugs. “Yeah, I mean. What else do you bring after a break up?”

And.

Billy feels like shit. “Steve I didn’t mean that--”

”Good.”

”I want you to have a happy life, and like. A good summer or whatever.” Billy says sharply. His fingers somehow tangle in the threads of the quilt, another gift from Mrs. Harrington.   
  


When he looks up again Steve is waiting. Patient. Constant as the stars above. Billy sighs. “Please don’t go, okay, just. Stay a little while. I love you.”

“I know.” Steve says. Soft, like a confession. “I’ll always dream of you, you know that?” Billy’s heart kicks into overdrive when Steve leans forward, slipping the earmuffs against his head, and.

Putting the world to sleep.


End file.
